


This Bitter Light

by plumedy



Category: Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Case Fic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, POV Alternating, Post-Canon, Story: The Adventure of the Devil's Foot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 12:57:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4565493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumedy/pseuds/plumedy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>After all those years of working with him I had finally come to understand what it is to trust</i> no one.</p><p>Doyle is the main suspect in a murder enquiry, and not even Bell can quite bring himself to dismiss  the damning evidence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Honouring

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MrsHorowietzky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsHorowietzky/gifts).



For no ripples curl, alas!  
Along that wilderness of glass —  
No swellings tell that winds may be  
Upon some far-off happier sea —  
No heavings hint that winds have been  
On seas less hideously serene. 

Having been his doctor for a while now, I was all too aware it was only natural that there should be traces of my presence in his house. What could I use that would not be disregarded by the police? I fumbled in the pockets of my jacket, producing a handful of items, which I then placed on the windowsill. Most of them were coins; this was no good. And others - my watch, my leather tobacco pouch - I had acquired much earlier, indeed before I had come to London. I could have easily left them here during one of my routine visits.

The only thing I had bought recently was my biscuit-coloured cashmere scarf. I slowly untied it from my neck. Yes, perhaps that would do.

I had noticed earlier that some of the nails that held the bed together were loose; two of them - one on each side - had almost come out. Now I tore a few thick threads out of the scarf and wrapped them around these nails, making sure that it looked quite accidental.

But maybe I thought too well of the local bobbies. I might need something more substantial; something that would unambiguously support my co-conspirator’s story.

I walked out into the garden, crossed it and entered a small dark garden-shed. There were some tools lying there, and among them, I knew, was a crowbar.

I used it to force the window of his room. Yes; that was much more convincing - perhaps dangerously so. Was I taking an unjustifiable risk? My career, my reputation - my life - were at stake.

Returning to the house, I carefully closed the window so that it would appear shut, and studied the purported crime scene. It was a bleak, grey day outside. And yet the sun still shone through the clouds; strangely colourless sunrays flooded a patch of the floor below the window and gave the coins I had carelessly left on the windowsill a dull gleam. The sight stirred something in me - a memory I thought I had long managed to banish - and I had to walk forward and quickly sweep the coins back into my pocket.

I experienced suddenly an awful, sickening pang of foreboding. What was I doing? God, what would Bell think of it all? No doubt he’d say I behaved like a fool. But perhaps it was worse than that. Perhaps I was endangering my old mother’s wellbeing, my little brother’s reputation and career in what was simply another one of my misguided attempts to do right by someone, to serve the justice that only existed in my overheated imagination. Quite the white knight I was, indeed.

For a moment, standing in that small cold, miserable room whose air smelt with dank wood and disease, I almost felt that my whole plan was needless heroics.

But then I turned to look at him. Far from having wiped away the suffering from his face, death seemed to have exposed it further. His features became sharper; the shadows around his thin downturned mouth deepened; there was an altogether uncanny impression that he had died of sheer heartbreak. Why, in a way this was precisely how he died - even if the particularities remained a mystery to me; and then again, I of all people needed no explanation to understand a man who grieved deeply and was unwilling to speak of his grief.

His light blue eyes were wide open, their empty depths flooded with sunlight. I bent down over him and closed them carefully.

How he must have longed for this rest.

Many would have said that none of it was my fault and that I was in no way responsible for the consequences. Yet it is easy to say such a thing when it was not your hand that signed the prescription for that laudanum, of which he must have swallowed a good pint; when it was not you who sat nightly by his bedside, listening to his endless delirious lament; when you do not keep asking yourself if, somehow, you could have saved a human life and did not.

No, I thought, the risk I was taking was not pointless. What I had done was but my duty, and by this I would stand.

It had all begun about two months ago, when Elmer Lansdowne came to me with a chest pain complaint. Though I’d practiced medicine here for some years, I had not known him before; indeed, I remember how afterwards I thought it peculiar that such a healthy man would have such a hard time recovering from what seemed to me a very mild case of pneumonia.

He was in his early sixties, proud in bearing, his soft ginger hair greying but still abundant. His skin bore a fading copper suntan - I had later learnt that he had recently returned from India. Slowly, almost reluctantly, I had taken a liking to him; we were never, I suppose, friends in the proper sense of the word, but there was a steady undercurrent of warm sincerity to his character that appealed to me and comforted me in my somewhat solitary existence.

He had a fine temper and could sometimes be strikingly harsh even towards those he liked. But the tone in which he talked of his family - and, in particular, of his only child, his son Darryl - bespoke fierce, tender love, and it made me warm up to him faster than anything else could have done.

Yet for all that, it had soon become obvious to me that the man was profoundly troubled by some sorrow or anxiety that was eating at him without cease.

In his lucid moments he would not speak of it; but in the hours of delirium, at night, when I stayed with him to do my best to reassure him and alleviate his pain, it was the one thing that haunted his thoughts.

“It will come for me,” I remember him sobbing into his pillow. “It wishes to kill me, Doyle. There won’t be a moment’s rest for me as long as I’m alive.”

By the uneven oily light of a little smoking lamp I could not make out his features but, unsettlingly enough, I could hear the loud chatter of his teeth.

Always I attempted to soothe him.

“Nothing is going to kill you, Mr Lansdowne,” I would say. “Yours is but a mild illness, and I have every reason to think that you will make a full recovery. Don’t be afraid. There’s no one here but I, Arthur Doyle.”

Sometimes that was all. He would quieten, relaxing under the covers; his breathing would grow even, and eventually he’d succumb to heavy, troubled sleep.

But there were other times, too, when my words seemed to have no effect on him. Worse, they increased his agitation.

“What do you know of fear?” he laughed at me in a shrill mad voice. “No, Doyle, there is no question of my waiting for it to come. I will have to kill myself, I will take my own life, do you hear me?” And then a look of deep anxiety came into his sunken eyes. “But who will take care of my Darryl? It’ll shatter him.”

His son - who, it seemed, had at the time been in India with his mother - suffered, I knew, from a nervous affliction and would in all probability take such a shock badly.

Naturally, I took these concerns to be a sign of improvement and tried to use them to reason with the man.

“See, there is no way you could do this to him,” I said to Lansdowne once. “You must stay alive - for Darryl, if for nothing else.”

For the truth was, these ravings troubled me immensely. They were but a product of his delirium; and yet I knew well how to a mind weakened by a disease, its darkest and most fantastic fears could become a powerful reality.

“No, no,” Lansdowne sounded pitiful. “I could not! I could never! Doyle, you must promise me - if ever I do kill myself, Doyle, I beg of you, you must not let him know. He can never know I have been such a coward!”

“Even if I were to accept this,” said I, trying to seem irritated to avoid revealing the fact that I felt a good deal of alarm, “which I would never do, how do you imagine such a thing could be done? It is not an uncommon practice to present suicides as accidents, but only so many people will buy an explanation like this. Certainly not the closest family members; and Darryl is no fool.”

“Not an accident!” he cried then. There was something about his expression that disturbed me further - a wet gleam in his eyes, a tension in his sweat-covered, chafed mouth. “There must be - someone to blame, something to do. He must think he can yet be of use. This is his nature, Doyle, surely you of all people realize this?”

Even in the midst of his delirium, a victim of his own incoherent and violent fantasies, Lansdowne had somehow - with a sort of Satanic, superhuman intuition - seen right through me, guessed the one thing he could say that would strike a chord.

But this astuteness, the sheer cunning of his ravings suddenly made me come to my senses. At once I saw how close I had been to the edge of the abyss.

Perhaps it was also that I was tired and had had not an hour of sleep that night; but for a moment the stuffy darkness of that room felt as suffocating to me as it was to my patient, and I was seized with a ridiculous but desperate urge to turn up the light.

I recoiled away from him, feeling cold sweat on my own brow.

“No,” I said quietly, and I heard myself how frightening my voice was. “No. I will never do any such thing. I will not help you, Elmer, do you understand this?”

I can still see his miserable figure curled up amidst the tangled bedsheets, half-obscured by shadows.

“My son,” he was crying, “my child! He will go mad; it will kill him - he cannot suffer so.”

It was a striking sight - that strong, purposeful man weeping like his heart would break, all his powers, all his energy concentrated in one effort towards self-destruction. And as I bent over him with more words of consolation and wiped his forehead with a cold cloth, I remembered, incongruously, a line from one of the Doctor’s letters.

“You know, the light that is in one may be dark,” he had written to me. “And how great is that darkness!”

And now Lansdowne was dead. I had come this morning to check on him only to find his cold body lying in that room, a half-emptied bottle of laudanum on his bedside table.

“I will not help you, Elmer,” I had told him; and yet what was I doing now but fulfilling his request? And I had to wonder, of course, if that had not been his intention all along - if it had not been my conscience he’d always been counting upon.

But there was no going back for me.

I sat down behind his desk and took out my own pencil and a notebook. It was a compact dark moleskin I normally used to record whatever little scenes I thought I might use for my stories; the Doctor had given it to me as a gift once he’d quite reconciled himself with the fact that I had no intention of giving up my “scribblings”.

I tore one page out and wrote the following line:

_I determined that the fate which he had given to others should be shared by himself._

The ornate brass key to the drawer of the desk was, I knew, in the breast pocket of Lansdowne’s waistcoat. I approached him, carefully lifted the covers, and took the key out. Upon putting the note inside the drawer and locking it, I leant out of the window and threw the key into the uncut wet grass of the front lawn.

Everything was ready.

“Miss Stokes,” I said, softly, entering the drawing-room. “Are you quite prepared to go through with it?”

She sat behind the table, her gloved hands entwined. At the sound of my voice she raised her head; and I believe that in that moment she caught a glimpse of what I was feeling, for the expression of faint distress on her face intensified into compassion.

“Yes, I will do so,” she said. “Are you sure you are not taking too much risk, Dr Doyle?”

I shrugged.

“My purported motive is nonsense; even your testimony can only give it temporary credibility. When the police learn Lansdowne never had a daughter, let alone one who was murdered, they will have to release me. And why on earth would I have forced his window when I had the key you’d given to me before going away? There is no case against me. Indeed, formally speaking, they’ll have no reason to think his death was anything other than a suicide.”

“And that note?”

“I took care of that,” I said. “It is no more than a quotation from one of my stories, and a published one, too. I’ll claim to have given it to him as an autograph. He did like my writing, after all.”

“Yes,” she agreed slowly, looking out at the pear trees in the garden. “And I suppose if that is the case, there’s nothing else to be done here. Go home, Dr Doyle; go home, and I will go to the police station.”

I lingered for a while. I believe I wished to thank her - for her presence of mind, for her help; for not thinking me mad, after all. But somehow I felt that she would not welcome that. She turned back towards me, a silent question in her eyes.

“No,” I said with some awkwardness. “No, it is nothing.”

And, after retrieving my coat, I exited the house.

It was cold and windy outside, and the streets were full of the same strange, quiet light that filtered through the clouds. But now it had a distinct pink tint to it; and I realized, with a start, how much time had passed since I’d discovered that Lansdowne was dead.

The nervous excitement of our preparations gone, I felt lost and uneasy. I could only hope I did not have much longer to wait - for the police to arrest me, of course; but also for Bell to come. For I had no doubt that the first thing Miller would do would be to send Bell a wire informing him of my unfortunate predicament.

Yes, I needed him. I needed him badly - his calm confidence, his shrewdness, his ability to shed light even upon the most tangled of mysteries. And, of course, his compassion and friendship.

But for now I was alone. And I wandered, with no particular purpose in mind, through Regent’s Park before finally reaching my own house. When I entered, the place was as I had left it: clean, if somewhat empty, but not gloomy nor even unhomely; and yet to me it seemed colder and lonelier, and I did not wish to go into my room, feeling that it would worsen my sense of isolation.

I wrapped my army blanket around my shoulders and settled behind the table, looking into the window. I had sat like this for a long time - hours, perhaps; it had grown quite dark. A surge of warmth towards Miller came over me - he had evidently proved to be hard to convince.

But not even he could ignore the evidence I myself had so carefully planted. And sure enough, at about half past ten I heard a firm knocking on my door; and I knew they had come for me.

“Doyle!” came Miller’s voice. “Open up!”

There was relief written on his face when he saw me. I understood that relief: he must have feared that I’d decide not to wait for him to arrest me and would take my own life instead. He might’ve even been right, I reflected, had I really committed a murder.

“Inspector?” I said. “What is it?”

He hesitated visibly.

“I have a warrant for your arrest,” he answered at last.

“On what charges?” I asked, perhaps a bit too calmly. I suppose I could’ve pretended indignation; but then I’d have had to explain the evidence he’d found, and it was not time for that yet.

And so I did not raise any objections to his claim that I’d murdered Elmer Lansdowne. Of course, in his eyes it must have amounted to a confession - and he looked quite stupefied. Taking my place between two of his constables, I mused that his reaction was rather stronger than I’d expected; evidently he’d grown to regard me with some sympathy, even if it was only insomuch as I was the Doctor’s colleague.

There was not much else to be said. Miller was taken aback enough not to demand any explanations from me. I thanked him quietly for not putting me in handcuffs, but his answer was rather monosyllabic. This made me conclude that he had not, in fact, read “The Devil’s Foot” and had therefore immediately taken my note at its face value; otherwise he’d have had rather more reason to doubt Irene Stokes’ story.

That was good for my purposes, although bad for poor Miller, and I derived some comfort from the knowledge that everything was proceeding as planned.

Further confirmation of that came when they escorted me to the station and showed me into my cell. The two constables had already gone, but the Inspector lingered on the doorstep, not meeting my eyes.

After a long pause, he cleared his throat.

“I have sent a message to Dr Bell,” he said. “I hope he comes soon.”

I thanked him again, but he turned away from me and closed the door without saying another word. I heard the rattling of the key in the lock, and then I was alone.

The place was much as I imagined - clean, but utterly bare, save for a hard plank bed and a copper basin - and I had to smile at the thought of how different my circumstances had been on the previous occasion when I was locked up in a cell like this. Back then, I had but engaged in a street fight with a brute of a sailor; now, I was held here on suspicion of having murdered my own patient, no less. How dire my predicament had seemed to me back then! How afraid I had been that it would affect my practice! I nearly laughed out loud at the memory.

My present situation, on the other hand, was hardly amusing. Everything may have been as I wanted, but there was still much work to be done; and only now did I realize how tired I felt.

I lay down. At first I found it hard to sleep, for the clear greenish light of the moon shone through the window straight at me. I covered my eyes with my hand, but it was not a particularly comfortable position, and for a while I thought the idea of getting any rest was hopeless; but in the end I had somehow - I do not remember how - managed to doze off.

I had not seen any dreams that night, possibly because I was so uncomfortable. I woke up next morning with a headache and a stiffness in my limbs; and neither was my mood helped by the realization that nothing whatsoever had changed or progressed while I’d been asleep. Of course, it was quite unreasonable to expect Bell to reach London overnight, especially when he probably believed that the whole thing was some sort of ridiculous misunderstanding; and yet I still paced and fretted, trying to think of how best to explain it all to him.

In a few hours the day broke. One of Miller’s constables came to transfer me to a different cell and give me a bowl of something dubious he claimed to be breakfast. Sighing, I ate it all and lay down again. Against all reason, I started getting bored; I wondered if I could ask Miller for some newspapers - mine was promising to be a long wait.

However, to my utter astonishment, an hour or so after that the same constable showed up to inform me that I had a visitor.

“Who is it?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.

“It is Dr Joseph Bell,” he said.

My surprise only grew. So the Doctor had forsaken his night’s sleep and come as fast as he could - for which I was, of course, immensely grateful. But had he already solved the riddle? It was a little alarming to think that despite my best efforts, the mystery remained a simple one. Though, of course, what was simple to him was not necessarily so to others, and perhaps I needed to reconcile myself with the fact that I would never be able to best the man.

I sprang up to meet him.

“Bell!” I cried. “How good of you it was to come at once. Please accept my apologies. Unfortunately, there was no other way in which this situation could be resolved - but I have much to talk to you about.”

“Indeed,” he said softly, and stopped. He came close to me and was studying me very intently, much as if he hoped to detect some important change in my features. This struck me as peculiar; we had only met a couple of weeks ago at a medical conference, and I could not fathom what it was about me that he now found of such enormous interest.

But I was too glad to see him to mull over the strangeness of his demeanour, and I merely smiled in response.

“Well,” he murmured at length, “I would like to hear your version of the events, Doyle, if you don’t mind.”

It was an odd way to phrase it. I believe that even then, though I kept smiling, I felt a small surge of uneasiness.

“I know you will think it was a foolish thing to do, Doctor,” I said, “but Elmer Lansdowne begged me to help him, and under the circumstances, I felt it was my obligation to honour his wishes.”

And I told him everything, if in a somewhat muddled manner. Truth to be told, I was increasingly anxious. The Doctor listened to my story with much attention, but I could not tell how sympathetic he was; in fact, his expression hardly allowed me to guess anything he might’ve felt.

“Irene Stokes was to go to Miller and tell him that I was convinced that he’d murdered his daughter,” I finished. “The story was that he kept talking of the purported murder when delirious and finally drove me to kill him. She was then to retract her statement. I suppose we could even manage on our own, but Miller would have, no doubt, wanted to inform you of the situation anyway.”

 “Rightly so, too,” agreed Bell. “So you’re quite adamant Lansdowne’s death was a suicide?”

“’Adamant’?” I repeated, desperately searching his face. He looked back at me, his light eyes peculiarly expressionless.

“Doctor,” I said. “Doctor, explain yourself.”

“I can only confirm Miller’s assertion that you’re a prime suspect in this case,” he said, his voice calm and even. He would not take his gaze off me. “As of now, you’re the only person who had both a motive and an opportunity.”

I suppose I looked foolish.  Certainly, I felt rather like my entire world was collapsing around me at that sight of what I perceived to be cold indifference.

“But this is ludicrous,” I laughed nervously. I could not even shout at him. “You of all people could have a little more faith in me. And you’ve only to check the church register to realize that Darryl was Lansdowne’s only child. The man killed himself - even if Irene Stokes decided to play her own game for whatever reasons, no one could prove otherwise.”

“We will return to Miss Stokes’ testimony,” he responded quietly. “But as to how Mr Lansdowne died, it is not a very common thing that a man commits suicide by stabbing himself in the back of the neck with a syringe.”


	2. The Boy With a Sword

“What a fool I am,” he muttered. “What a fool!” And there were anger and sadness in his expression.

He turned to me.

“This does make me a suspect. But why ever would I have killed him? Judith Lansdowne-“

“-is quite real,” I interrupted. In retrospect I am sure I informed him of the fact so that he would not have to confess to knowing it - if he did know - which qualified as actively obscuring the official enquiry.

The scarf on his neck was of the same fine pale cashmere as the threads I had found in Lansdowne’s room. Of course, Miller’s people had overlooked them and did not bother going through Doyle’s clothes.

“Judith Lansdowne killed herself fourteen years ago, Doyle,” I continued. “She was fifteen at the time. There were rumours that her own father murdered her in cold blood, but no one could prove it - and neither was anyone eager to do so, considering how influential Lansdowne was.

“I have revisited that case since. And I am quite satisfied it was suicide; Elmer Lansdowne was not guilty.”

If this came as a shock to him, I could not see it. But his composure had grown admirably over the years. He was no longer the angry, unhappy, impulsive ginger boy I had befriended in 1878 in the Edinburgh University.

“I did not know that,” he said quietly. All the fight seemed to have drained out of him; he looked lost and tired. “Lansdowne often mentioned that Darryl was his only child.”

 _He had slept badly_ , I noticed quite needlessly, surveying his posture and his face. _His shoulder hurts_.

“You’re saying, then,” said I, “that your motive was Miss Stokes’ idea.”

“Indeed, it was. Though from what I’ve heard from you, I do not expect she will confirm this any time soon.

“I assume, by the way, that she has an alibi?”

“She does,” I said, and I had to marvel at my own self-control. I had rather feared I would not be able to remain calm; but here I was, sounding for all the world as if I couldn’t care less. Truly, human nature is a mysterious thing. “She was in Brighton. One of her friends met her there and can testify as much; and she has the railway tickets, too.”

“I’d swear she was in Brighton, as well,” shrugged he, closing his eyes for a moment.

“This does not, of course, mean that she is necessarily innocent. She may have had an accomplice.”

He blinked at this. It seemed that this idea surprised him; no, I suddenly understood, he was surprised that _I_ would voice it. Like any suspect, he had instinctively concluded that I believed him guilty.

“Bell,” he said. I think his lips might’ve shaken. I’m not sure; at some point I stopped looking.

“Anything else you wish to tell me?” I asked, turning away. For a while he was silent.

“Lansdowne told me that his wife and his son are coming back from the colonies on Thursday the 25th,” he responded at last, his voice firmer.

“In two days. I know. I have found Darryl’s letter. I’ll take care of them, Doyle.”

I did not offer him my hand; I doubted he would accept it. We said our farewells and I walked away, nodding at the young constable waiting by the door.

Much to my dismay, I was stopped by Miller on my way out. Judging from the state of his blue uniform tailcoat, he had got no more sleep that night than I had, and the unusual and potentially scandalous case he now had on his hands was evidently troubling him greatly. Perhaps he had some personal regard for Doyle, too; almost certainly so, considering Doyle’s exemplary conduct in our last London case.

However, the truth was that at present I wished nothing less than to talk to anyone, let alone to Miller.

“Inspector,” I acknowledged as curtly as I could. But the wretched man was not to be intimidated.

“Dr Bell,” he cried. “I am very grateful you have interviewed Doyle yourself. You certainly spared me an embarrassing task.” I could’ve laughed at that, though I am not sure he perceived the irony. “What is your opinion?”

Something must have changed in my expression, after all, because he was staring at me almost rudely, a crease between his bushy black eyebrows. Miller was no fool, and I could only hope his scrutiny would not tell him too much. At least it had quelled my concern that my eyes may have been wet; if that had been the case, I judged, he would have looked far more disturbed.

“I don’t think it is time to form any definitive conclusions,” I told him coldly, pulling my gloves on. No doubt, this must have been among the most unsatisfactory answers he had received in the course of his career, and his face reflected as much. “Goodbye, Inspector.”

I exited the station and began walking in the direction of Lansdowne’s house. Irene Stokes was quite the mysterious figure; I needed to learn more about her if I was to make any progress at all, regardless of whether I felt like it. And in a quiet area such as Portland Place, where the Lansdowne family lived alongside the many families of other colonial officers, my best bet would be talking to their idle - and hence, no doubt, nosy - neighbours.

The great city was awash with grey light; the outlines of its buildings were like the enormous letters of some complex alphabet. I recalled, vaguely and with a sense of feeble astonishment, how in the beginning of my forensic career - after Edith’s death - everything had been like this to me; everything had been a code to be cracked, a text that required translation; a question I had to answer. I had felt that if only I answered enough of these questions, I would somehow get to the heart of the matter, find some ultimate truth that would explain whatever I did not understand about the world. Ridiculously, it had not occurred to me that I might not wish to know that truth even if it did exist.

I reached Regent’s Park. The trees stood bare, save for an occasional yew; the paths were deserted, for it was cold and the sky threatened snow. For a while I walked down the soggy expanse of an alley into the gloom of the park. But my steps were gradually getting slower; and at last I had to stop and lean on my cane. After a time I turned away from the alley and sat down on a nearby bench.

I despised myself. To hell with truth, I thought, to hell with correct answers - I should have trusted him even if it meant being wrong. And if he was guilty, it was my burden to bear. Had he himself not borne ever so many failures of this kind without losing his will to be kind and helpful, to trust people? And was he not brave in his friendship towards me?

If Edith were alive, she would’ve agreed with me now, I was sure of that.

“You would have loved him,” I said to the empty park.

Of course. I could imagine her inviting him over for tea and introducing him to the children. Cecilia was only eleven when I had met Doyle, and Benjamin was ten, but Doyle had younger siblings himself, after all, and would’ve hardly minded. We would not have saved him from his sorrows, but perhaps knowing that there is always a place where he would be welcome and cared for would’ve been a comfort to him. And I would have never taught him anything beyond medicine.

If I closed my eyes, I could almost see her smile happily at this idea; laugh at the thought of Doyle trying awkwardly to entertain Cecilia; come towards me and take my hand. “Joseph,” she would have whispered. “Is he not a good lad?”

There was a violent howl of wind in the treetops. My fingers curled around empty air; I could hear my own heartbeat, and there was nothing in my mind but blankness, a cold sense of depression so overwhelming that for a while I could not move.

I did not consciously reason with myself. I don’t believe I was thinking anything at all; but as time went on, I became dimly aware of an urge, a dark undercurrent of anxiety. There was a purpose - a duty - and at last I made myself get up.

I gripped my cane, pushed my top hat down further on my head, and proceeded along the alley at a brisk pace towards the district of Marylebone.

In fact the Lansdowne residence was not in Portland Place itself, but rather in a small side lane that stretched in the direction of Clerkenwell. An odd place it was; perhaps it was because the acrid wind from Clerkenwell blew straight through this lane, carrying with it the smoke from the factories, but there seemed to be a subtle air of misery about those silent crouched houses. It wasn’t the despair and filth of a slum, but rather a quiet hopelessness of a community of formerly prosperous people who had now fallen on hard times. Here and there I could see a cracked window, a dirty curtain, a flimsy door with peeling paint.

At first I thought the lane was deserted. I walked slowly towards the small brown two-storey house that stood next to Lansdowne’s, intending to see if anyone was home; but an odd gleam of light I saw from the corner of my eye distracted me. I turned towards it and saw a small boy walking towards me from the other end of the street, apparently still quite oblivious to my presence. In his hand was a rather oversized toy sword, which he waved around with an expression of great pleasure.

“Hello,” I called. I had not been intending to talk to him about the case; though he was certainly a child of some servant living in one of the houses nearby, he would hardly, I thought, be happy to engage in a conversation with an alien-looking adult stranger. But, rather to my astonishment, he readily came closer - why, he almost managed to stab me in the leg with his toy by accident.

“Hello, mister,” he said.

Perhaps it was that over the past two hours I had lost all my ability to look menacing. No wonder Miller had not been intimidated - rather than seeing the brilliant Doctor they all so respected and were so wary of, he must’ve seen much the same sight as this little boy: a funny sad old man dressed like a toff at a funeral.

I softly steadied the blade of the boy’s sword with my hand.

“Who are you, laddie?” I asked.

“James,” said he, and added, with a little pride, “James Arthur.”

Of course, the name had stung me.

“Are you not afraid of me, James?” I got down on one knee to bring myself level with him. He shook his head.

“I’m not afraid of anything,” he said. “Well, maybe of Mrs Turner. A little.”

“Ah, yes,” I smiled at that. “The cook.”

It was hard not to notice a messy piece of carrot cake sticking out of the pocket of his patched green trousers. The original owner of the cake could hardly approve of such behaviour.

“How’d you know?” he stared at me in awed astonishment. “Yes, she said she’d give me a whipping if she ever catches me stealing food again!”

“I have a friend who knows some people around here,” I shrugged. “He recommended one Irene Stokes as a good lady’s maid, and I’ve come to see her, but it seems something happened that made her move out of her former address.”

And I made a face that ought to suggest that I was none too pleased about Miss Stokes’ change of quarters. Of course, the story was flimsy; if I had indeed been seeking a servant - a servant for my hypothetical wife, at that - why would I have not invited her to my house?

But I supposed I looked eccentric enough for an oddity of this sort to sound natural. And the boy certainly did not seem incredulous.

Only now did I notice just how small he was - hardly six years of age; I had to wonder why he was playing here all alone.

“I know Miss Stokes!” he cried. “Haven’t you heard about the awful murder, mister?”

His eyes fairly lit up at the words “awful murder”.

“No,” I said, “I have not. A murder? How unfortunate.”

“Old Colonel Lansdowne got stabbed to death! He was Miss Stokes’ master, she had to move to a boarding house after that. And the murderer is still here!”

“Indeed?” I asked absently. “Why do you say that?”

It was just a rumour, I thought, one of those that always arise after a violent enough death. But those words about Lansdowne having been “stabbed” had a different flavour - half a falsehood, half a truth; I knew a piece of deliberate misinformation when I heard one. Miller’s work, I thought. He obviously did not wish for the locals to know that Doyle was in any way involved.

“Joey Hardy saw him,” whispered the boy. “He came back to the scene of the crime.”

“Oh, yes? Well, the police is bound to catch him soon, then. What about Miss Stokes? Where is this boarding house you’ve mentioned, James?”

“Somewhere in Clerkenwell,” shrugged he, clearly disappointed that I seemed to lose interest in what he had to say about Lansdowne’s death. He shifted from heel to toe, waving his sword about; the wooden blade gleamed in the golden rays of the sun that had rolled out of the clouds.

“Maybe I’ll see him, too,” he said thoughtfully. “The murderer.”

“Just be careful,” said I to that, putting a hand on his shoulder. If the true criminal was still at large, that Joey Hardy might not have been lying; and I suddenly felt a pang of anxiety at the thought. The boy’s fearless, naïve excitement made him an easy prey.

He stared at me, somewhat puzzled. My expression had clearly betrayed rather more than I might’ve wished to show.

“What is this Miss Stokes like?” I asked, hastily changing the topic.

“She’s a nice lady,” he answered upon some reflection, took the carrot cake out of his pocket, and began chewing it. “Not from around here. I think she said she’s from Aberdeen - is it in Scotland?”

“Yes,” I said, “the north.”

That was odd. I remembered Irene Stokes’ accent, and she sounded like a Londoner born and bred. And if she’d lived in Scotland before coming here, she certainly never mentioned it to me.

“Did she like her master?” asked I.

“The old colonel? Well, they didn’t complain about each other. She didn’t talk about him at all.”

“I see,” I sighed, using my cane to stand up. Kneeling on the cobblestones had been a mistake - my bad leg was now hurting acutely.

There was not much else to be gained from this conversation. My object now was to go and talk to some other servants in the vicinity; likely they would not tell me much more of value, seeing as Irene Stokes evidently kept herself to herself, but I needed to exhaust all possibilities for investigation into her before turning my attention to the matter of Judith Lansdowne’s suicide.

“But she was real nice to me,” the boy added, looking up at me with his clear round eyes. “She used to always buy me caramel apples on fair days.”

It was obvious that after all my questions, he was starting to doubt if I really was who I was claiming to be. That was not too important; he had already told me everything I wanted to know.

“Of course,” smiled I. “Thank you, James. You’ve been most helpful. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind introducing me to your mother?”

James’ mother - Alice Nicolson, a small dark-haired kitchen maid from the house on the opposite side of the street - proved to be kindly and agreeable, but, rather as I had anticipated, did not have much to say on the matter. Yes, Irene Stokes was a reserved but kind-hearted woman. No, she, Alice, had not noticed anything out of the ordinary happening prior to or immediately after Elmer Lansdowne’s murder. Theirs had always been a very quiet neighbourhood, and there had been no newcomers for months now.

“Who was the last person to come here to live?” I asked her.

“The gentleman with the Indian name,” she informed me, wrinkling her upturned freckled nose. “A Mr Rufus Korrapati.”

Of course, in an area like Portland Place there must’ve been many people of foreign descent. Still, I made a mental note of the fact that, like the Lansdownes, the newcomer had a connection to India. He was likely a son of a colonial officer’s daughter who had married a local; perhaps he had met the Lansdowne family before.

We were sitting in a narrow poorly lit kitchen, stuffy and reeking of old spices. Mrs Nicolson courteously offered me a cup of tea, which I refused.

I sighed and closed my eyes.

“Mrs Nicolson,” I said, “tell me: do you know Dr Arthur Conan Doyle?”

“Arthur Doyle? The old colonel’s doctor? Sure I do. We all know him well! He treated my little James when the stupid boy had fallen off the roof of Jenny Wilkins’ garden shed. Didn’t take any money for it, neither.”

“Do you like him, then?”

She smiled at that.

“Yes, sir. He’s a kind man, sir, I can tell you that. Always wants to do right by us.”

That evening I asked the same question from Miss Irene Stokes, and, surprisingly enough, received much the same answer.

“Truth to be told, I’ve often questioned my decision to come forward,” she said softly, shaking her head. I caught a whiff of her honeysuckle perfume. “Dr Doyle is… an unusual person. I’ve rarely met anyone as honest and caring. He makes the pain of others his own pain.”

And I knew that well.

“Even if he is a murderer?” I asked bluntly.

“Yes,” said she, and gave me a brave look. “If he killed poor Colonel Lansdowne - which is, of course, a tragedy - I think he only did so because he believed it to be just.”

That was, indeed, the trouble with Doyle. He was ready to give anything for the glorious cause - from his reputation to his life.

“Was he very distressed by Lansdowne’s delirious ravings, then?” I was watching her carefully. She didn’t - couldn’t - know anything about Miss Elsbeth Scott.

“Yes, Dr Bell,” she said, a hint of discomfort in her features, “and so was I. It was fearsome. Of course, I know that the Colonel was haunted by his daughter’s suicide, but it seemed at times as though he had killed her himself. On a few occasions he was almost hysterical with remorse.”

“I see,” said I. “Tell me, Miss Stokes: do you know anyone in particular who may have convinced Dr Doyle that Judith Lansdowne did not kill herself, but was murdered?”

“It is hard to say now,” she shrugged. “It was just a rumour that floated around, and I don’t know all the people who were involved in spreading it. You’ll remember that I did not work for the Lansdowne family at the time. But I believe that one gentleman who was particularly convinced of the truth of the story has recently moved to Marylebone.”

“Indeed?” I remained nonchalant. Showing her my interest in the fact would’ve hardly been wise. “Do you remember anything about him?”

“An Indian name,” she informed me. “I’m not sure- something long. I never remember them. A Mr Rufus, I think - Mr Rufus something.”

That was good. It gave me one more potential suspect apart from Doyle and Miss Stokes, who, of course, had an alibi and no tangible motive. Selfishly, I felt a hot surge of gladness.

She looked at me steadily, her deep dark eyes searching, and raised a hand to her mouth.

“You are a friend of Dr Doyle, are you not?” she asked in a low voice.

“Yes,” I said simply.

“He often spoke of you.”

I nearly choked on my tea; I didn’t know what to say to that.

“It must be difficult for you,” she said, before I could change the subject.

“That is hardly any of your concern, Miss Stokes,” objected I. It was easy for me to dismiss her attempts at being shrewd; “difficult” did not come close to what I felt.

“No,” she responded, turning away. “It isn’t.”

I left after an empty exchange of pleasantries, noting the cleanliness of her tiny room and the half-finished pile of cinnamon biscuits on a shining white plate. Irene Stokes may have been many things, but she was certainly not unsociable nor careless. It was hard to imagine that after a year of living in Portland Place she’d still have trouble remembering Indian surnames, or that her asking personal questions from a complete stranger could’ve been anything but deliberate.

My next destination was the police archive of the Marylebone district. That “rumour that floated around” had, indeed, been so persistent that a case had to be opened - though I had never found out if there was anything more than just a rumour. The drama had played out before Miller’s time, and the case file itself bore, I knew, no traces of whatever testimony or piece of evidence had proved so serious as to merit an investigation into the affairs of the wealthy and influential Colonel Lansdowne.

There were pages upon pages of finely typewritten text accompanied - unusually - by photographs. The writer dutifully described the room where Miss Lansdowne’s body had been found, the position of the body itself, the objects found nearby. And yet, gradually, the stream of information thinned; by the end it was as if he were wishing he could stop typing altogether. Even the sentences, it seemed, grew shorter.

The conclusion was not spelled out. But one could see it clearly enough in the strings of empty euphemistic phrases.

Naturally, there was nothing as to Judith’s possible motives; nothing as to her relationships with other family members; nothing.

It was getting dark. The streetlamp that stood next to the window threw a circle of faint cold light on my desk, cutting through the thickening blue shadows. I struck a match and lit a small gaslight on the wall above, moving the case file closer to it.

The fragile stained paper felt velvet soft under my fingers. These pages might as well be empty, I thought. The text seemed to me quite insubstantial; all I could see was a string of blank spaces, a series of omissions - like a text of its own; a mysterious silent symphony.

 _She killed herself_ , I heard.

Why did she do it?

What was she running from - whom was she seeking to punish?

I turned the last page and saw a photograph of the family together. Elmer Lansdowne towered over his two children, his back straight and the epaulets of his uniform gleaming. His fair-haired wife stood by his side with a haughty expression on her finely chiselled face. On the chair in front of them sat Darryl - a sickly, pale youth dressed in a dark rough camisole. I recalled that he had graduated from a medical school and later, like Doyle, gone on to become a ship’s surgeon; but his health had worsened and he was consequently discharged.

Judith sat on his right, an awkward, sullen girl with a mass of beautiful black hair and a freckled round face. I turned the gaslight up a trifle. In that photograph she looked, if anything, like an accumulation of burns or ink blots - a black dress; black hair; a heavy gaze of dark expressive eyes.

She looked straight at me, cold and unforgiving, as though she blamed me for all her sorrows.


	3. The Solution

I don’t know why I hadn’t fallen to my knees and begged him to believe me. Perhaps, even under the threat of death, a part of me still found the thought too humiliating.

Or it might be that I’d feared his reaction. I feared that, rather than seeing him waver in the face of my entreaties, I would see his composure solidify further; that he would push me away with a grimace of cold disdain.

I sought some fact, some memory to grasp at - and found none. No assurance of his goodwill, his affection, his respect for me seemed convincing; all I could remember was how clear his eyes had been when he looked at me and told me, in a flat voice, that I was the prime suspect in the Lansdowne murder case.

The cell was full of cold grey daylight. My breath formed small clouds of vapour in the air. I stared at them and thought that a few more nights in there might well make me ill.

I sat on the edge of my bed and ran my hands through the pockets of my jacket. Though I didn’t remember clearly if anything had been taken from me when I’d been searched, I had a vague hope that there might be something on my person - say, a notebook and a pencil - that might help to distract me from my thoughts.

My fingers stumbled against something that felt cool and hard, like a square piece of glass. I pulled my hand out and stared at what, as I realized with numb astonishment, was a framed photograph of a young fair-haired woman.

She had a lean face with high, sharp cheekbones; her expression was that of pride and self-assurance; but her hair was dishevelled, and there was a brilliant sparkle of laughter to her narrow light eyes. It was as though she were mocking someone.

I was quite sure I had never seen her in my life. Certainly I could not fathom what the photograph was doing in my pocket.

I must have put it there when I’d been at Lansdowne’s house, I thought, with a pang of uneasiness. What had possessed me to take it? No doubt, Miller would make something of it, and I knew that I did not want to find out what that “something” would be.

Turning it over, I found, to my disappointment, that the reverse was clear of any marks. I didn’t even know who it was - was it Lansdowne’s wife? Or some other relative?

There was something strange in the photograph itself. The background was a mere blank wall; the woman stood, it seemed, too close to the camera - I had to wonder if she hadn’t been blinded by the flash - in fact, the whole composition had a faint but distinct sense of awkwardness about it.

At last I was sure I couldn’t make anything of it, and in despair I put it away.

For a while I sat there, my elbows on my knees, resting my forehead against my hands. There was only one man in the world who could help me make sense of this case, and he did not trust a word I said. Come to think of it, I had no idea if he ever trusted anyone at all. What a life it was - a life where no friend was close enough and nowhere was safe!

But did he have a reason to trust me? I wondered, staring at the rough brick floor. Could I, Arthur Conan Doyle, solemnly swear that I could never, under any circumstances, commit a murder?

He had mentioned that Judith Lansdowne had committed suicide and was rumoured to have been killed by her father. Had I believed this rumour to be true with all my heart - might I not have really committed the crime I was being accused of? Surely the memory of Elsbeth would have been more than enough to drive me to murderous rage after all the sleepless nights I had spent by Lansdowne’s bedside.

I laughed at this bitterly. Why, the Doctor was hardly wronging me more gravely than I was wronging myself! I had no reason to be upset at his behaviour.

There came the sound of someone’s footsteps, brisk and yet heavy. Miller, I thought with astonishment. I could hear the flat uneven clatter of his boots, of which the right one had a loose heel. What he was doing near my cell at this time of the day I had no idea; the only possible explanation was that he’d received a crucial piece of news, and I shrank from the prospect of learning it.

“Dr Doyle,” Miller said curtly, standing in the doorway and making no move to enter. There was an odd air about him - he regarded me with a sort of grim, uneasy wonder, the gaze of his bull-like brown eyes piercing.

“Inspector,” said I, and nodded with a measure of sarcastic courtesy. “What brings you here?”

Whatever his mission was, I determined that I would behave with dignity. And, I mused sadly, my predicament could hardly get much worse.

“I am here to tell you that you’re free to go,” he said, sounding for all the world as though he had difficulty believing his own words.

I said nothing and made no move to rise; I was too shocked to even show any signs of pleasure.

Miller continued to scrutinize me with unsettling intensity.

“Do you know why you’re being released, Doctor?” asked he very softly.

“Presumably thanks to Dr Bell’s efforts,” I blurted. Amidst my confusion, this was the only reasonable explanation I could think of. Of course, the Doctor must have somehow solved the case - even if, if Miller’s facial expression was any indication, the solution had proved to be highly unorthodox.

“Yes,” said Miller. “In a manner of speaking.”

He was still standing in the doorway, as though afraid that I’d suddenly bolt.

“Dr Bell has come to me this morning and said that he’s ready to vouch for your alibi and so are four other reliable witnesses, whose names and addresses he provided me with.”

I almost asked him what this mysterious alibi of mine was, which serves to show how disoriented I felt. Thankfully, I managed to bite down on my tongue before it was too late.

“Doyle,” said Miller, for some unfathomable reason dropping my title, “I don’t know where those witnesses of Bell’s have come from. Nor do I have any desire to find out. But I know that after talking to you yesterday, he looked as unhappy as ever I seen the man look.”

I waited, holding my breath. Whatever I felt, whatever I thought had to be smothered, shut behind a mask of indifference. The single most important thing was to avoid undermining the Doctor’s plan, regardless of its particularities.

“I think any man would be unhappy upon finding that his friend and colleague was wrongfully imprisoned and accused of murder,” I said carefully.

Something softened in Miller’s dark angular features. He made a small step towards me.

“Of course,” he said. “Dr Doyle, I have no intention of questioning his integrity. I must say that I also have no intention of interfering with your release. There isn’t a reason for me to detain you any longer.”

And he stepped aside to let me through.

“You may collect whatever items we have taken from you from the room on your right.”

Apart from my father’s watch and some money, there wasn’t much, and under different circumstances I would have found it in my heart to laugh at the fact that Miller’s constables had stripped me of my most inconsequential belongings while utterly overlooking my scarf and the photograph in my pocket. No doubt, poor Miller had thought that the photograph belonged to me and wished to demonstrate his goodwill by allowing me to keep what he perceived to be an object of sentimental value.

I hastily stuffed the watch and the coins back into my pockets and exited the room, following Miller down the corridor leading towards his office.

Only a fool would have failed to realize that I owed my freedom to him almost as much as I did to Bell. And yet I fear that my reaction to his lenience was quite inadequate; after putting my signature on a couple of documents he offered me, I shook his hand in a rather fumbling manner and gave him a crooked smile.

“Thank you, Inspector,” said I.

For a moment he looked at me gravely, as if wishing to say something or to ask me a question. But - perceiving, perhaps, that I had none of the answers - he seemed to decide against it.

“Off you go, then,” he nodded.

I walked towards the heavy door with a cast iron handle, opened it, and found myself in the street.

There had been a snowfall earlier in the day, but the snow had all melted, and the pavements were coated in a thin layer of water that reflected the endless white expanse of the sky and the dark wet trees of Regent’s Park. All breathed with icy freshness; like flowers in spring, black water swirls blossomed between the cobblestones.

I heard someone’s voice call my name.

“Bell,” I said, without turning. My heart was beating somewhere in my throat.

“Come,” he said quietly.

When I finally faced him, he was standing only a couple of yards away, much the same as when we had last met - his posture proud and the gaze of his blue eyes calm and fearless.

I took my place on his right and we began slowly walking away from the station and into the exquisitely soft winter light that strangely resembled fog.

“Where am I supposed to have been during the time of the murder?” I asked at last, hoping that I didn’t sound too strangled.

“Oh, you’ve been attending a charity ball on the other Thames bank,” the Doctor informed me courteously. “I even found the cabbie who took you there and back.”

“How much did you give him?”

“Only a guinea,” said he. “He happened to owe me a favour.”

There was such an air of serenity about him that anyone else would’ve begun to doubt Miller’s sound judgement. But I knew better than that; I could not allow the Doctor to deceive me for the second time.

I looked at him closely, and behind his every gesture and every word I could see a powerful emotion, one which he seemed to take pains to conceal.

“I’ll pay you back,” I said.

He raised no objections.

“What about Irene Stokes?” asked I. “Have you talked to her?”

We turned into Howland Street with its stately plane trees which now stood leafless, their silvery bark peeling.

“Certainly,” he responded. “She is insistent that you knew about Judith and that while she was in Brighton, you did not have a key to Lansdowne’s house.”

“And you believe her but not me?”

This was a deliberate provocation on my part, and sure enough, it seemed to strike something in him. He stopped and turned to me, putting both of his hands atop his cane.

“I believe no one,” he said, softly but very distinctly.

This did not come as a surprise to me, as he’d perhaps thought it would. I said nothing.

“And if we are to assume that everything you’ve told me is true,” continued the Doctor, scrutinizing me, “you may do well to follow my example.”

“Perhaps I could’ve been more observant,” I answered. “But surely a man cannot mistrust everyone. Should I not trust you?”

“You should trust me least of all,” he said to that, and the look on his face sent chills down my spine. He seemed quite serious, his mouth hardened with conviction; but the wind had disarranged his hair, and there was a strange gleam to his eyes so that the general impression was that of noble and solemn madness. “I have been fully prepared to accept you as a suspect in a murder case. Is this something a loyal and honest friend of yours would do? Who is to say that I am not also lying to you?”

This was, of course, exactly what he was doing, albeit in a manner very different from the one he implied.

“You’re a good man, Doctor,” I told him, impulsively.

He did not seem in the least convinced by this claim.

“Is this what you really think, Doyle?” asked he in a low voice, squinting at me. “And yet I am fairly sure that only this morning you were asking yourself if my devotion to the method had not turned me into a lunatic and a monster.”

For a while we stood in silence.

“It is not as if I am much better,” I told him glumly. “You think, of course, that I was mistaken when I believed Elmer Lansdowne and Irene Stokes. The truth is, what little faith I had in their goodwill was only there because I willed myself with all my heart to believe them.

“I can no more trust people than you do. The only difference is that I’m better at hiding and suppressing my mistrust; and so I am not only a lunatic, but also a hypocrite and, it seems now, a fool.”

“It looks like we’re suffering from the same unfortunate malady, then,” the Doctor responded thoughtfully. He was looking at me with a frankly unsettling intensity.

“Foolishness?” I smiled with some bitterness.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Doyle,” he waved his hand and seemed to be about to say something else; but then he interrupted himself quite abruptly.

“Whatever the case,” he said, “I offer you to investigate the Lansdowne murder together. I would be most grateful for your assistance.”

“Am I still a suspect?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Then you’re free to go.” He sounded calm. And yet there was something in his voice, a slight change of tone, like the twang of an overstretched string. I suddenly wished fiercely to comfort him; but well I knew that we might have as well been a thousand miles apart for all I could do to this end.

“I accept,” I said, and shook his outstretched hand firmly. “Tell me everything.”

And we walked on, the Doctor following me a little way behind like a long awkward shadow.

He could be a good storyteller when he wanted to be, but this time he seemed determined to follow his own principles scrupulously by recounting every single detail of his enquiry, including the peculiarities of the architecture and planning of Lansdowne’s house. Among other things, he described his conversation with James Nicolson, a local boy, which, as far as I was concerned, had turned out to be largely useless. It appeared to be his serious intention to include me in the investigation as an equal - or, I thought, to give me every impression of having done so.

But there was a lot to be mulled over in that queer story, not least the identity of the mysterious Rufus Korrapati. Why had Irene Stokes directed the Doctor to him? Of course, I knew she was lying about many things; but why she was lying was as yet quite beyond me. To protect the true murderer, surely - and yet she seemed to be helping us in other regards, and was even reluctant to openly condemn me.

We had rounded the corner of Montague Street and approached my house. Bell stopped in front of it, and his hesitation was palpable.

“You’re free to stay,” I said hurriedly. “In fact, I would be grateful if you did.”

He shot me a dubious look, clearly questioning the latter part of my statement, but thanked me graciously.

“I won’t deny that I’d prefer it this way,” he said.

Afterwards he sent for his things and settled on the couch in the drawing-room, deep in thought. My circumstances were very different from when we had met in the beginning of the Abbey Mill case - one of our first cases together - and I had a solid dinner to offer him. However, to my dissatisfaction, he utterly refused any food apart from a piece of rhubarb pie, which he promptly covered in what looked like entirely too much sugar. I could almost laugh at that.

In fact, we fell into the strangest light-hearted, half-ironic tone. Our recent conversation seemed to be utterly forgotten; we chatted idly, as we would do when working on any other case. But all the while each of us was aware that the other suspected him of manipulation and dishonesty.

Stranger still was the fact that I had, nevertheless, found his company consoling. I felt that I was not one bit sorry for inviting him in, even if it had given him ample opportunity to spy on me. An odd creature is man - in his affections as much as in his dislikes.

“I do hope you are not going to make me investigate myself,” I said, handing him a cup full of steaming tea. “That would be just a tad too absurd for my liking.”

“Thank you,” and he shook his head. “Certainly not. I’ll take that entirely upon myself. Speaking of which, would you be so kind as to lend me your scarf?”

I looked him in the eye.

“You know you’ll find that the threads are identical, Doctor,” I said.

He did not grace that with an answer, continuing to stare at me with the same expression of calm vague expectation. I sighed, undid the scarf, and placed it in his cupped hands.

“Very well,” I said. “As you wish.”

Bell nodded, hiding the thing in a pocket of his coat. I sat behind the table across from him.

“If I were you, I would be looking for someone who was or is very close to the family. A relative, I’d say.”

“And not someone who targeted you instead?” he gave me a sharp look.

“Hardly,” said I. “I’ll admit that despite all my hesitation in fulfilling Lansdowne’s request, my behaviour might’ve been predictable; but the criminal would’ve had to know me very well. And then there’s something about this murder - an air of malice. I don’t believe the murderer’s object was financial profit.”

“The only person who’s to benefit from Lansdowne’s will is Darryl Lansdowne,” agreed the Doctor. “And he will not receive much.”

“Yes, it is this,” I said, tinkling my spoon in my teacup somewhat more emotionally than was strictly appropriate, “and also the way the murder was committed. Making it look like a suicide - that is cold cruelty. The criminal wished for his victim to be humiliated; even in death.”

Bell didn’t speak for some time. We were both, I believe, conscious of the fact that what I’d said applied also to another death, one that had happened a long time ago.

When I raised my head to look at him, however, his expression was flat. I thought now that there was something unnatural about that flatness.

“Maybe,” he said at last, softly. “You’re right that there seems to be an undertone of some strong passion to it. Though making the murder look like a suicide would’ve also come in handy if the criminal needed to buy himself time.”

I decided that for now that topic was best abandoned, especially since any further debate would be hardly more than bare speculation.

“Let’s review what other leads we have,” I offered, and produced my moleskin and my pencil. The Doctor eyed them, his lips twitching slightly.

“Not a lot,” said he. “Apart from the fine mess you’ve made of Lansdowne’s room. There is, of course, Rufus Korrapati, whom we must soon pay a visit.”

“You’re concentrating on everything that seems to be relevant now,” I objected, “but surely there may be other clues - perhaps some inconsistency in the already established facts. Shouldn’t we look at the broader picture?”

“I don’t find this approach particularly helpful,” he said. “There are too many things one would need to check. What would you add to the list?”

“I can’t say my proposal would expand it too much. Miss Stokes’ railway tickets, perhaps, and her friend’s testimony, and then Darryl’s letter.”

“The second one is reasonable,” nodded Bell. “Though I doubt that there’s anything wrong with the tickets. And what do you want with that letter? It hasn’t any information apart from the time of their arrival.”

“Still,” I said. “Some peculiarity of wording, perhaps.”

“Note it down if you want,” he allowed, and rose to his feet. “We’ll see what we can make of it. Meanwhile, I shall leave you for a time; there’s a business I need to finish.”

And with that vague explanation he put on his long black coat and walked out of the house.

I looked at the window and noticed that it was snowing again. It was almost the winter solstice, and days were short; the snowflakes were falling heavily through the gathering gloom.

Was this the ultimate logical development of the Doctor’s method? I wondered. Was this the best it could do - to make a man doubt everyone, looking at the world with his eyes wide open and his heart turned to stone?

I was entirely too exhausted and in pain. Intellectually, I might’ve appreciated the benefits of having no faith in people; but a part of me wished only to rely upon Bell, to ask him for warmth and consolation.

“It seems that we suffer from the same unfortunate malady,” he’d said. His heart was far from hardened; I realized that more and more clearly with every minute spent in his company, though I would’ve given a lot to learn the exact nature of his feelings.

When I’d been younger, I was, I thought, more immune to the suffering such things brought with it. I was angrier, more desperate; I took all-encompassing mistrust to be the sharp sword I needed to strike down all the evil I could. But that time had gone. And now there was no one to be angry at but myself.

“There must be something to do,” I remembered, “someone to blame. Surely you of all people understand it?”

My eyes fell onto the open moleskin lying on the table beside Bell’s half-finished cup. I took it carefully and looked at the list of leads I had compiled not half an hour ago.

 _I. S. says E. L. talked of Judith_ , it said. _Clearly a lie._

But _was_ it a lie? I asked myself suddenly, feeling a vague and horrible memory stir in my mind.

He never said her name nor the word “daughter”, that much was true.

_It will come for me. It’s going to kill me._

What else could’ve haunted him so - what else could’ve left such a deep, unhealing wound, incited such terror? “It” was surely Judith Lansdowne. Perhaps, in the throes of his disease, he was convinced that he had seen her ghost; and he had, just as Irene Stokes said, blamed himself for her death so fiercely that he feared revenge.

No wonder he never talked of her when awake; no wonder he tried to erase her from his memory to the point where he no longer acknowledged her as his child.

And perhaps someone else shared his sentiment, I thought. Perhaps Irene Stokes’ mysterious accomplice had been avenging Judith.

Of course, the next question suggested itself to me soon enough. Was this act of revenge entirely unjustified? Could it be that Colonel Lansdowne had really if not murdered, then driven his daughter to suicide? It was a horrible idea; but, sadly, this didn’t mean it was false.

There came a hitching sound of hurried footsteps. The door opened and the Doctor stood there, a piece of paper in his gloved hand. His shoulders were covered in snow.

“I can tell you one thing, Doyle,” he said, gravely. He walked towards me and put the paper he’d been holding on the table. “Elmer Lansdowne was not a liar.”

I must’ve given him a wild look, because he suddenly seemed concerned.

Indeed, there was something almost supernatural about his timing. It was as if he knew exactly what I’d been thinking about - knew even without observing me. Naturally, I realize now that there should’ve been nothing surprising about the fact that both of us followed the same train of thought; but back then, I had quite succumbed to that madness of fear and doubt and was ready to latch onto anything that could solidify my resolve to be wary of him.

“Has something happened while I was away?” he asked cautiously, inclining his head a little.

The fact that Colonel Lansdowne had, just as Irene Stokes said, talked of Judith in his delirium was a piece of solid evidence against me. _If Bell comes to the same conclusion as I did_ , I thought, _let him do it himself; I’ll not tell him a word._

“No,” I said, my voice calm. “Nothing happened. What was that you were saying about Colonel Lansdowne?”

He scrutinized me for a moment, but then looked away and nudged that paper of his towards me. I saw now that it was an old worn family photograph, and a moment later I recognized the face of the father.

“Yes,” he said. “Inspector Miller has courteously agreed to lend me the Lansdowne family portrait. You see, when I first looked at it, what struck me was Judith’s appearance. How different her round, soft face is from the sharp features of her parents and her brother! And then she’s the only member of the family to have dark eyes and dark hair - any observant doctor of medicine knows that the birth of a dark child to fair-haired parents is an improbability of the highest order.

“You’ll remember, of course, suggesting that I consult the church register?”

I nodded wordlessly.

“Well, this is exactly what I did,” and he gave me an odd half-smile. “There is no Judith Lansdowne, Doyle. But there is a Judith Korrapati, born on the 25th of December 1871 to Rufus and Rachel Korrapati.”

Rachel was the name of Elmer Lansdowne’s wife, Darryl’s mother. It was she standing beside Colonel Lansdowne - and I noted mentally, too, that she was pictured in the photograph I had found in my pocket earlier.

For a while I mulled that information over.

“So Rachel and Rufus divorced afterwards?” I asked at last. “How unusual.”

The Doctor shook his head. He still stood there, his hands on the table, staring thoughtfully at the photograph.

“I doubt they did. Had they divorced, Rachel could’ve hardly retained the custody of their child. If I had to hazard a guess, there was some sort of subterfuge - possibly involving the forgery of legal documents.”

“Running the risk of getting jailed is a big price to pay for a divorce,” I remarked, astonished. “It is evident that neither of them could prove adultery or mistreatment. Why on earth were they so desperate?”

“And that is a good question,” nodded he. “We might just find out the answer once we visit Mr Korrapati.”

Seeing that he was midway through putting his coat on, I jumped to my feet.

“What, now?” I asked incredulously. “It must be already eleven o’clock.”

“I would not care a jot if it were three in the morning,” parried the Doctor. “If he is the murderer, I wish to wait no longer.”

And as it happened, we were soon given a much more urgent reason to hurry.

No sooner had the Doctor approached the door than there came a loud knocking; someone was positively beating his fists against the wood. I opened up and found myself face to face with a uniformed constable, whom I recognized as one of Miller’s people.

“Dr Bell, sir,” cried he, utterly ignoring my presence. “A message from the Inspector. You’re to come with me at once.”

Bell took one look at his face, grabbed me by the hand, and fairly stormed out of the house. I believe there were some feeble protests from the constable as to my presence; but the Doctor gave him such a look that the poor man did not dare object further.

And then we were, I saw now, in quite a hurry. The black brute of a police horse was trotting furiously, its hooves a deep regular rumble against the cobblestones.

The Doctor stared at our constable.

“Where, what for?” he asked curtly.

“A child has gone missing from Portland Place,” the constable answered. “Inspector Miller thought -“

Even in the uneven jumping light of the streetlamps I could see that Bell’s face suddenly went ashen. And then I knew, too, what was to come.

“Who?” he asked very quietly.

“James Nicolson is his name, sir. He hasn’t been seen since yesterday evening.”

Yes, it was the son of Alice Nicolson - that little boy with a sword who so wanted to see the perpetrator of “the awful murder” described to him by a mysterious Joey Hardy. He might’ve just got his wish, and the thought sickened me.

Bell’s expression was horrible.

“Where has Miller ordered to take us?” he asked sharply.

“Why, to the boy’s mother.”

“No,” Bell said. “We’re going to 25 Portland Place.”

And he repeated the directions to the driver, utterly disregarding the looks of hesitation the constable was giving him.

The address belonged, as it was easy enough to guess, to Rufus Korrapati. We got there soon enough; the streets were dark and empty, and the horse began shifting its weight heavily, pastern-deep in the mixture of snow and dirt covering the road.

Bell and I jumped down from the cab. The constable did not follow us, having clearly assumed that whatever happened next was not his responsibility. The Doctor didn’t care. He hurried towards the dark mass of the house, throwing open the small wicket beside the main gate.

The house had three storeys, though because of the height of the windows it looked much taller; it was built of rough grey stone and resembled a countryside cottage rather than a regular city house. At least it had a sizeable yard and a garden, through which we were now walking so fast as to nearly run.

There was no light in the windows, but, unusually, a lamp burnt beside the door, illuminating everything sharply - the bare stones of the path, the snow accumulating on the ground, the tangled dead shoots of wild grape. And at the far end of the yard, I suddenly saw a small figure. It ran towards us, the footsteps inaudible in the snow.

The Doctor stopped in his tracks.

“James,” he said only.

The boy smashed into him and grabbed the skirts of his coat. Dropping his cane, Bell bent down to him and picked him up; over his shoulder I could see the child’s scared face.

For a moment it was impossible to tell who was clinging onto whom. James was muttering something so hurriedly it was impossible to make out; and at first Bell seemed not to hear. Then he came to his senses, his hand stroking the boy’s back.

“There,” he murmured. “What is it? Did you see him?”

“I saw him, yes,” James seemed on the verge of sobbing. “He is the murderer! We’ve been watching him since yesterday and we followed him from the old colonel’s house, but Joey ran away and left me here.”

“Indeed?” I saw the Doctor’s eyes scan the building. He slowly and very carefully put his burden back on the ground. “Where was he, James?”

“He’s just returned and we thought he was asleep. But when I stood under his window, he came towards it and looked right at me! I didn’t know what to do - I hid in the bushes.”

“And you did very well,” the Doctor said, his hand lingering on the boy’s shoulder. “Be a good child, run to the road and report to Constable Lennox whom you’ll find in the police cab. He’ll take you home. And we’ll see what we can do about this murderer of yours.”

James seemed only too glad to obey. He turned away from us and ran back down the path, his little shoes splattering against the wet stone. Once he was safely out of the circle of light cast by the lamp, Bell quickly picked his cane up and walked forward lightly, gesturing for me to follow.

We knocked on the door. I aimed my revolver at it just to be on the safe side; and I saw Bell tighten his grip on the silver knob of the cane.

The one sight we had hardly expected was the one we were confronted with: the owner of the house came out in his night-dress, quite clearly about to retire to bed; the spectacular reception he received both stupefied and frightened him, and for a while he simply looked at us with his mouth open wide, trying to say something and failing.

I could see his face well. It was round, smooth - despite the advanced age of the owner - and covered richly in freckles. There was something almost boyishly cheeky in the upturned nose and the wild black curls of his fringe; or at least there would’ve been had his expression not been distorted with anxiety.

“Mr Korrapati?” Bell said, severely.

“Yes,” the man managed at last. “And who the devil are you?”

“Perhaps it would be better if we went inside.” The Doctor’s voice was soft, almost purring. And I could see that he was still not quite himself. His eyes were full of dangerous mirth.

We entered the house; I lowered my revolver, deciding that it would hardly be any use in that gloom. I just made out the high ceilings and the large stone staircase leading to the second floor. It was an old building, from that peculiar era when English architects seemed intent on making every cowshed look like a castle.

Korrapati seated us behind a long table of dark polished wood and brought a small lantern.

“Do explain yourself,” he said with as much dignity as one can reasonably expect from a man when he’s still wearing his night-gown.

“I am going to be very straightforward,” said the Doctor. His features were sharp in the feeble orange light. “My name is Dr Joseph Bell, and this is my friend and colleague, Dr Arthur Doyle. We are assisting the police with the investigation of Colonel Elmer Lansdowne’s murder.”

“Are you, now?” Our suspect seemed nervous at that announcement; his great pale hand balled in a fist. I did not think he would prove to be a good liar.

“Yes,” said Bell. “And, what will, no doubt, seem of greater importance to you, we have multiple witnesses ready to swear that they have seen you watching Lansdowne’s house.”

Prudently, he did not mention that these witnesses were two six-year-old boys.

“They’re lying.”

“Have you no reason to be watching that house? No connection to the Lansdowne family?”

“None at all.” But he flinched at the last sentence.

“Dear me! I must say that in all my years of work, this is the first time I encounter a man whose marriage was so awful that he managed to completely forget it.”

That had clearly hit home. Korrapati jumped to his feet, his eyes dark with anger.

“I have no idea how you have learnt of that,” he cried, “and I care not. But leave Rachel out of this. We have long divorced.”

“Illegally,” agreed the Doctor pleasantly.

“Yes,” shouted Korrapati, “yes, and it is low and despicable of you to hold this against us. By the deplorable laws of this country, there is no reason a man and a woman should not wish to live together but adultery. Natural differences of character do not exist; disagreements are insubstantial; we might as well be angels from Heaven as far as our dear Church is concerned.”

This was a speech of which, under different circumstances, I would have fully approved. But we had not come there to discuss politics, and the same thought seemed to have occurred to the Doctor.

“Your marriage and your divorce would remain your personal affair if you did not get yourself involved in a crime,” he said calmly. “Tell me, Mr Korrapati: what were you doing near Colonel Lansdowne’s house and where were you at the time of the murder, on the night of Monday the 22nd?”

Korrapati looked at Bell closely, and there was a hint of a gleeful smile on his face.

“Ah, so that’s what you’d like to pin on me! Very well. I shall not answer the first question, and it is none of your business even if I were there; but the second question is very easy to answer. I was on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.”

This was not a development either of us had anticipated. Even the Doctor was visibly taken aback.

“Can you prove it, Mr Korrapati?” he asked at last.

“Certainly,” said Korrapati, his smile growing broader. “You can ask Captain Jackson of _Victoria_. I am sure he will be happy to confirm my alibi, as will the company from which I purchased the tickets.”

“I shall contact them,” said the Doctor gravely. I shot him a look. We clearly did not have a plan as to what to do now; but this defeat was bitter to swallow, and he was in no hurry to admit it.

In that great ancient hall, our solitary silent figures gathered around the lantern must’ve looked much like a meeting of some secret lounge.

“Shall I show you out, gentlemen?” asked Korrapati politely. He was gloating.

Ready to rise, I put the revolver back in my pocket and heard a clink - a strangely loud sound, louder than anything metallic could’ve produced.

And then I suddenly realized something.

I had not guessed all in that moment. I am not clever enough to put such a complex chain of deductions together in a single second as the Doctor would casually do. But I recalled Colonel Lansdowne’s passionate character and his propensity for obsessions, which I’d mused about not an hour ago; I thought of how long Rufus Korrapati must’ve watched Lansdowne’s house - surely he had already managed to search it at least once? But he did not find what he was looking for.

The reason seemed clear enough to me.

“Is this not what you were seeking, Mr Korrapati?” asked I, and produced the photograph of Rachel Lansdowne.

The change in him was instant. He grew white as a ghost and would’ve knocked the lantern down if the Doctor did not catch his hand; then he sat on the chair beside us, his breathing fast and his eyes wide and wild like those of a scared horse.

“Incredible,” he muttered. “Utterly, utterly - incredible.”

“Is this why you watched Lansdowne’s house?” I insisted.

“Yes,” he said, helplessly. His eyes were on the photograph. In that light the face of the woman seemed even happier, her smile - wider; she was beautiful.

“I couldn’t be certain that I’d find it there, but when I heard about his death, I wished to make sure she wouldn’t be incriminated,” Korrapati said, in a low voice. “What are you going to do with it now?”

Much to his credit, the Doctor looked as unconcerned as though he had placed that photograph in my hands himself. I decided that this meant he was giving me _carte blanche_.

“Absolutely nothing,” smiled I, “if you promise to tell us everything you know about Colonel Elmer Lansdowne’s murder and Judith Lansdowne’s suicide.”

Korrapati’s capacity for astonishment was quite exhausted; but his face darkened immeasurably when I mentioned Judith’s name.

“It is an easy promise to make,” he said at length, gloomily. “I know nothing about his death. But if I knew who the murderer is, I would fall to my knees and thank him as if he saved my own life rather than taking Lansdowne’s.

“I presume,” and he turned to us sharply, “you know who Judith is?”

“We do know that she’s your daughter,” the Doctor answered gently. The frightful anger I’d sensed in him when we had approached Korrapati’s house was all gone; indeed, though he looked at Korrapati with sympathy now, there was something almost empty in his expression.

“Yes. Then you know, too, that she was rumoured to have been murdered by Lansdowne. And I am convinced - I’m willing to swear - that this is God’s honest truth.”

“Why exactly do you say this, Mr Korrapati?” I asked.

“Well, it couldn’t have been Rachel,” he said with something resembling a laugh. “Judith had no reason to commit suicide. She was such a happy child.”

“If this is true, we will prove it,” said Bell, rising and briefly putting a hand on Korrapati’s shoulder.

Of course, this was an empty promise; Bell himself thought Judith had killed herself, and I for one was not inclined to doubt his expertise. But the air of calm authority exuded by the Doctor seemed to give his words weight, and Korrapati looked comforted - which, I was sure, had been the Doctor’s object.

We had exited the house and walked back towards the road. The police cab was gone; the tracks went in the direction of Clerkenwell. There were a few stars in the deep velvet sky, and the snow fell down in one unending silent torrent of freezing white softness.

I offered Bell the photograph. He accepted it carefully, looking at it with a sort of absent curiosity. I had rather thought his reaction might be stronger.

“That was very well played, Doyle,” he said. “Very well indeed.”

He thought, of course, that I had concealed the photograph from him. And how was I to convince him of the opposite when I _had_ lied to him only an hour ago?

Against all reason, my heart ached with his praise.

“This is, naturally, a portrait from a case file,” continued he, seemingly without paying any attention to me. “Did you guess this at once?”

“I was not sure until the last moment,” I said. He shot me a quick look; I could not tell if he believed me. “I just thought there was something very strange about it. And then I remembered that their divorce was illegal-“

“-and thought that Rachel may have already had experience of breaking the law,” the Doctor finished with satisfaction. “Yes. Forgery of legal documents, perhaps. And it does look strange. This wall means that the photograph was taken in a studio; but why would she pose for a picture with her hair disarranged? Why would she stand this close to the camera, where the flash was bound to blind her? The answer is, of course, because she was made to stand there. And this wooden object in the corner must be a fragment of the wooden pole used to show her height.”

“Yes,” I said.

He put the photograph back into my hands.

“I think you should keep it, Doyle,” he said. “Let us see if we mayn’t need it.”

I had no idea why he’d given it to me. This was not his custom; he’d always preferred to safe keep all evidence himself.

But I was preoccupied with a rather different matter now. As we walked on, back down Howland and then Montague Street, I observed him; and I saw what I should’ve guessed long before. This investigation had cost him much more than he let on - indeed, too much. The incident with James Nicolson had broken something in him; he seemed no longer able to pretend.

I looked at his pale, drawn face, at his sunken gleaming eyes. I knew now precisely what that feeling he’d tried to hide from me was. It was pain, and grief, and desperate, destructive self-doubt.

There were no words in the world I could say to him; and so I said nothing. But it was unthinkable to me to leave him alone and without comfort. Perhaps it was because I had begun to guess how much of his pain was for me. But perhaps, too, I had simply stopped caring what stood between us and what wild suspicions each of us entertained.

My landlady - who, happily, had not yet learnt anything of my latest misadventures - was home, and I asked her to give Bell the bed in our spare room. When I changed into my dressing-gown and went to him, I found that he was sitting on the covers fully clothed, his legs crossed Indian style, and reading a treatise on the degradation of the human eye under exposure to excessive amounts of sunlight.

Then I brought an armchair and a pile of old newspapers for myself and sat near his bed. He didn’t object to that at all - if anything, he looked a little lost - which convinced me that I’d made the right decision.

I stayed with him until this wretchedly stubborn man dozed off, holding his precious treatise to his chest, and I took his coat off and covered him with a blanket. I think he might’ve said my name; I was so drowsy myself that I had just managed to get to my bedroom before falling asleep in what I imagine was not a much more dignified position than the Doctor’s.


	4. The Light

Doyle was right. I doubted he knew _how_ right he was - although, truth to be told, after yesterday I would have been surprised at nothing. Yes, he’d lied to me and played his own game; but played it brilliantly. And hadn’t he every right to?

There was one last formality to be completed, and then I could go to Brighton. After the boy I’d sent to the docks had come back with a message from Adrian Jackson confirming Korrapati’s alibi, I had virtually no doubt as to what awaited me there.

It was a fine snowy morning. The snowdrifts under our windows had grown over the night, and all was dazzlingly, endlessly white.

The sunrays felt warm on my hands when I heaped his scarf on the table and smoothed it out. From the pocket of my waistcoat I fished out a magnifying glass and the bundle with the threads found in Lansdowne’s room.

Naturally, the threads were identical as he had said. But there was something else, too - little grey fibres that had once undoubtedly been a part of a rope.

That wasn’t the sort of evidence I’d have called conclusive under any other circumstances, but it was quite enough to calm me down now that I knew everything. Colonel Lansdowne, though in good physical shape, was by no means strong enough to be tied down with anything more than that one scarf. The reason the nails had come out was because someone else had used them before - for much the same purpose Doyle imagined they could be used - and was careless enough not to remove the traces.

I gulped down the cold tea that stood on the table and looked at the staircase leading to the second floor. For a moment I had to fight desperately the urge to go and knock on the door of his room.

But what had I to say to him? What remorse could wash away all he’d suffered? Indeed, I had to be surprised at how kind and generous he’d been to me when anyone else in his situation would’ve hardly found it in him to tolerate my presence in his house.

No, I thought. Let him sleep.

My gaze fell upon his moleskin, opened at the page that read: _Darryl’s letter stating they shall arrive on the 25 th_. “Look at the broader picture,” he had said.

Upon dressing and putting on my top hat, I walked outside and took a cab to the Victoria train station. It was only eight in the morning, and I had just managed to catch the train that departed for Brighton at three minutes past.

It was, of course, the busiest time, and even the first class was full; there wasn’t much privacy to be had, which was unfortunate, because I felt as though I were crumbling to pieces.

Something had happened to me when we’d found Jimmy Nicolson in the yard of Korrapati’s house, and the realization that Doyle was no longer the primary suspect made it worse. There was enormous relief; but what a painful, overwhelming sort of relief it was! And I was drowning in it.

I suspect my fellow passengers thought I must’ve been drunk. I seemed to hear vaguely reproachful whispers around; only one little lady decided that I was ill and offered me a cold cloth to cover my forehead. I found it touching and, suspiciously enough, hysterically funny, though I refrained from laughing lest someone became convinced my illness was of the mind rather than of the body.

It was an hour’s ride with one stop in East Croydon. When we arrived there, I went to walk on the platform, hoping that the fresh air would help me regain some of my former composure; but instead I ran into the stationmaster who, by a strange coincidence, was searching for a Dr Joseph Bell of Edinburgh University.

“You’re talking to him,” I said, tipping my top hat lightly. “How can I help?”

“I have a message for you, sir,” he said.

That was a singularly curious development. I accepted it from him - a note scribbled on a piece of notebook paper in large hurried letters that had, nevertheless, retained some of the fanciful flow that was evidently characteristic of the author’s handwriting. I knew both the handwriting and the paper well: the message was Doyle’s.

“My dear Bell,” it said (and even now he called me this!), “I have been to Brighton and seen Darryl Lansdowne near the Norfolk Hotel. I am watching him and will act as circumstances require. - Doyle.”

For a moment I stood there, deep in thought. I did not like the idea of alerting Miller; though perhaps some other measures of precaution would not be amiss.

I turned to the stationmaster.

“Mr-“

“-Marsden,” he supplied.

“Mr Marsden, would you be so kind as to write down my name and the train I’ve taken? Very well, thank you. If today I do not pass this station again, please send this note to Scotland Yard.”

And I solidified that request with a guinea. Under other circumstances I might’ve been less generous, and he was lucky that in that particular moment money was the last thing I was thinking of.

The train was about to depart. I jumped on the footboard and returned to the compartment when it had already started moving, rolling softly past the wooden frost-covered columns supporting the roof of the East Croydon station.

My head felt significantly clearer; that sudden turn of events energized me and allowed me to analyse the case anew.

I had to chastise myself, of course, for not noticing that Doyle hadn’t been home when I rose. That was sloppiness on my part; the emotional turmoil I was in only made it more inexcusable.

But there were other, more important matters to be considered. Did his decision to go to Brighton mean that he knew everything about the solution to the case? And how might he act towards the true murderer of the man whom he had felt so desperately for and whom, as far as I could tell, he considered a friend? I patted the pockets of my coat, making sure that I’d brought the revolvers. Based on what I knew, Doyle was not in any particular danger as long as he did not act rashly, but that was the very thing I could not guarantee; and both Darryl and Miss Stokes struck me as resolute people.

The busy Brighton station rolled by, and a moment later I stood on the platform.

There was no doubt in my mind that Darryl would show up at that same train station soon enough. As it was, the only reason he’d remained in England this long despite the danger of being caught was because he was supposed to arrive in London on the 25th \- today - and until then, he could not leave the country again without arousing suspicions. Of course, his sole desire would be to leave for London as soon as possible, receive the news of his father’s death, and depart for good.

I therefore was in no hurry to follow Doyle’s directions, and walked slowly through the crowd, surveying my surroundings. The Brighton railway station was a massive construction built of wood and yellow stone; it had only one exit and one entrance - both in the middle of the platform, facing the doors of the arriving trains. The smell of smoke was heavy in the crisp winter air.

At last I reached the less crowded end of the platform that was covered in fresh snow. And I was about to turn back when I heard someone’s voice call my name.

“Dr Bell,” it said, softly.

I whirled around and found myself face to face with Miss Irene Stokes. A small revolver in her hand was pointed straight at my chest.

Of course, I had my hand on one of my revolvers, too. But I realized that my chances of convincing her that I was as willing to use it as she was to use hers were slim. She had an obvious advantage.

I walked towards her, closer and closer, looking her in the eye.

“What exactly are you expecting to happen, Miss Stokes?” I asked curiously. “If you’d like to shoot me, you might wish to hurry, or you will be noticed.”

“Go back to London, Doctor; and I promise that not only will you and your friend remain unharmed, but also that the case will be closed tomorrow.”

“That is an interesting promise,” said I. “But I think I prefer to stay and see to it that the case is closed myself. And I would advise against killing me; if I do not return to London, the police will be alerted. Speaking of Dr Doyle, where is he?”

Her expression was that of extreme distress.

“Dr Doyle? I thought-” And she was about to say something else; but we were interrupted in a most abrupt and theatrical manner.

Nobody else but Doyle himself had walked out from behind the nearest column and straight into the line of fire.

“What _did_ you think, Miss Stokes?” he asked politely. We were all quiet, and there was a small outhouse standing between us and the rest of the station; so far, the scene had no spectators. No doubt, this was exactly why Miss Stokes chose that end of the platform in the first place, but I found that I was grateful for it myself; at least there was no one to provoke her into firing.

“I am sure you do not wish to kill me and leave Dr Bell alive,” he continued. “It would be better if you surrendered.”

She looked at me over his shoulder. My expression must’ve convinced her that the idea to shoot him in front of me would, indeed, be the most unfortunate decision of her life, because I saw a convulsive change pass over her face; she dropped the revolver.

I approached them and gave him his long-suffering scarf, which he used to tie her hands.

“Darryl got away,” sighed Doyle, and I saw her face relax at that remark.

“That is hardly a problem,” said I. “He will not abandon Miss Stokes. In fact, you have only to walk into the station and invite him to join us. But do be careful.”

The Brighton stationmaster, though shaken by the idea that there had been an armed conflict at his station, was kind enough to lend us his goods shed until, as I’d put it, “the police arrived”. I did conveniently forget to mention that I had not, in fact, called any police.

It was a spacious room with dirty white walls, almost empty save for a couple of wooden boxes full of overripe apples. Doyle gave Miss Stokes his coat to sit on, and I stood beside her.

“I am grateful, Doyle,” I told him, “but I would rather prefer it if you did not risk getting yourself killed.”

Thank God, thank God he was all right. Stupid boy with his stupid bravery.

He gave me a defensive look.

“I could echo that,” he said.

“I would like to mention that the revolver wasn’t loaded,” Miss Stokes remarked tiredly. “I wouldn’t have threatened either of you with a loaded firearm.”

That gave us some pause. I checked that she was telling the truth; indeed, there wasn’t a single bullet in the chambers. It confirmed my theories neatly enough, though I was still chagrined at Doyle, who almost certainly hadn’t suspected anything of the sort.

He had gone out and, as I had predicted, returned a few minutes later in the company of young Darryl Lansdowne.

Lansdowne approached me, limping slightly.

“I do not believe I have the honour of knowing you,” he said evenly, his gaze steady.

He was slightly shorter than Doyle and had to throw his head back to look at my face; his body was lanky and a little clumsy - due to an injury of some sort, as far as I could judge - but he had a high, finely sculpted forehead of a thinker and a hard stubborn mouth. And his big clear eyes were a startlingly light blue, almost white.

I was conscious of Doyle looking at me from behind Lansdowne’s back.

“Dr Joseph Bell of Edinburgh University,” I responded courteously. “I take it you’ve already made the acquaintance of Dr Doyle?”

“Yes.” He was silent for a while, and I saw his eyes briefly dart towards Miss Stokes. “Dr Bell, I don’t like playing games. There is no lawful reason for you to hold my friend captive, much less to try and use her to manipulate me.”

“Except the fact that she held Dr Bell at gunpoint,” objected Doyle, coming closer.

“The gun was not loaded!” Lansdowne’s eyes flashed with suppressed anger. “And she was nervous. She has long known you suspected her of murder; she has told me as much.”

He knew very well that he was fighting a losing battle. But, to his credit, he had clearly decided that he would fight it to the end.

“Mr Lansdowne,” I began, pacifically, “I take no pleasure in tormenting people. I would like to make you an offer.”

“I will agree to no offers unless you untie Miss Stokes.”

“I shall do that,” I said. “My only requirement is that both you and she give me your word of honour that you will not try to escape. And afterwards I would like us to go somewhere and have a cup of tea.”

“You’re mocking me.”

“On the contrary,” and I offered him my hand. “I am deadly serious. There’s no way news of the incident hasn’t got out by now. The longer we remain here, the bigger is the crowd outside; I will be surprised if someone hasn’t already called the police.”

Lansdowne gave me an assessing glance, clearly trying to decide how genuine my offer was. At last he had realized that he hadn’t any options other than to agree.

“Very well.” He gave my hand a sharp squeeze. “My word of honour.”

I nodded.

“Doyle, would you be so kind as to stand on Miss Stokes’ right? And Mr Lansdowne shall walk on the other side.”

And we started off - an exceedingly odd procession with myself, Doyle, and Lansdowne as the guardians and Irene Stokes as the sole prisoner, her hands still tied with a biscuit-coloured fine scarf, her eyes on the ground.

Squeezing through the crowd standing on a busy train platform is hard enough under regular circumstances; but when this crowd is full of idle gapers convinced that there has been a crime (and by now, I was sure, the victimless assault with an unloaded firearm was turned by their imagination into a fair bloodbath), it becomes nigh on impossible. If it weren’t for my cane and for Doyle’s generally impressive appearance, it is entirely possible we would not have got anywhere.

At one point I had found myself face to face with a small old man who was shaking his fists and telling me that “justice shall surely prevail”; and I found, too, that I was saying “surely it shall” and smiling an empty smile while not having the haziest as to what he was alluding to.

As it was, we had eventually walked out into the streets of Brighton, and the tail of idlers behind our backs thinned into nothingness.

It was a fair winter day, and we were alone. Doyle hastened to untie Miss Stokes’ hands.

“Take it if you wish, Doctor,” said she, and offered him a piece of cloth that smacked of something familiarly cold and sweet. Chloroform. “I merely intended to prevent Dr Bell from interfering with our escape; I meant to do no harm. But I promise I will not run away.”

She was very calm. After a while, she raised her hand to tuck behind her ear a black curl that had been pried out of her hairdo by the wind.

“What exactly are you intending to do with us now?” she asked.

“That depends,” I said. “It is merely that Dr Doyle here and I would like to… tell you a story, if you will. And I am very interested in your reaction to it, Miss Stokes.”

We walked into one of Brighton’s smaller squares and found a little café. Its owner showed some surprise at the sight of four new visitors at the hour when most were busy settling their daily affairs, but did not begrudge us some tea and a piece of cake for Miss Stokes.

“I did not actually have any breakfast,” she said. “I thought that by now we would be out of Brighton. But since we are not, I suppose we may as well listen to your story, Dr Bell; I am sure it is an interesting one.”

“I hope as much,” said I, and looked at Doyle. “Dr Doyle, perhaps you could start?”

“If you permit,” he said, turning to Miss Stokes. “Of course, to realize that you had deceived me was only the beginning, Miss Stokes, for I had to prove it, too.

“And that was precisely what I could not do. I had no idea why you did what you did. Was it to protect Rufus Korrapati? But you’ve already named him to Dr Bell, even if you have demonstrated a peculiar forgetfulness in doing so; and, at last, his innocence was proved beyond doubt. Who was there apart from him? I; but surely I could not begin to suspect myself of murder.”

She smiled at him a little.

“And then I remembered what Dr Bell here always used to teach me. Where there are multiple conflicting testimonies, look for one which has no supporting evidence.

“The only reason we were sure that Colonel Lansdowne’s son was coming to London on the 25th was because he had written as much in his letter to his father; for all we knew, I realized, Darryl Lansdowne could’ve been in London the whole time since that letter was posted.”

“That is something _I_ should’ve realized sooner,” said I. “I suppose I began suspecting something of the kind when I saw that Judith Lansdowne’s case file did not contain the testimony that led to the opening of the case. Who could’ve given a testimony the police would’ve immediately trusted, even in the absence of any other evidence? Of course, it was the remaining child of Colonel Lansdowne. Sadly, I did not come to this conclusion until Dr Doyle reminded me to look at some evidence that was seemingly outside the ongoing enquiry.”

Darryl was silent, the knuckles of his hand holding a fragile flower-patterned teacup white with tension. But Miss Stokes did not seem in the least taken aback and gave me a long thoughtful look.

“You and Dr Doyle seem to benefit from each other’s expertise,” she remarked. “Forgive me. Do continue.”

“Dr Bell had mentioned, too,” Doyle said, “that Darryl Lansdowne used to be a ship’s surgeon. That would explain the preferred method of murder. And as to where I was to look for him, why, that was the easiest part; why else would Miss Stokes have gone to Brighton? I feared only that he had already escaped, making it impossible to prove his guilt.

“Fortunately, I tracked him down soon enough after interrogating a few porters at the Brighton station. But then I wondered, too, why he and Miss Stokes had committed the crime in the first place.”

He paused, looking at Lansdowne, who had turned away and would not face him.

“I still have no answer to this question,” he said quietly.

I thought again of how much he had changed since our first case together. The young Doyle I had known would’ve shouted at them, demanded an explanation; but there was not a hint of anger in his face now - only dispassionate wonder.

And yet I knew how much was behind that dispassionateness.

“Perhaps I can shed some light onto this,” I said softly. Lansdowne and Miss Stokes turned to me, startled. “I don’t know everything, and I hope that you tell me more when I’m finished; but for now, let me give you my version.

“Our assumption has always been that the murderer did not know enough about the circumstances of Judith Lansdowne’s death or else had been deliberately misled. But perhaps he knew more than we did; perhaps he knew that the reason Judith had killed herself was because her father had found out the truth about his wife’s past.

“Rachel Lansdowne used to be a criminal. Once her husband knew that, what power had she against him, what could she do to avoid a humiliating, scandalous divorce and a consequent life of despair and poverty?

“She had children whom she loved. But, while both children were hers, only one of them was also her husband’s; and Colonel Lansdowne’s sentiments were not so unambiguous.

“His contempt and, perhaps, even his hatred for his wife fell upon Judith as much as they did upon Rachel. Judith, too, was to share Rachel’s fate, to be thrown out of the family to which she had belonged her entire life, to be parted from her older brother.

“And she could not stand that thought. She had taken her own life.

“Of course, her brother knew exactly why; and he felt hatred for his father, such hatred that he craved revenge, even if the law could not give him that satisfaction. But sometime later, in the Indian city of Port Blair - in the Aberdeen district - he had encountered someone who sympathized with his plight and was willing to help.

“Is this not the truth?”

Lansdowne was trembling.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes. Every single word of it. And more.”

His gaze was wandering around the café, his eyes wide and unseeing. But his voice was steady with determination.

“You have worked this out superbly. But I would like to tell you a story, too. And then it is in your power to command its conclusion.”

“My father loved me,” he continued, and his mouth twitched convulsively. “Yes. He even loved little Judith - in the peculiar fashion a man loves a precious jewel or a beautiful racehorse.

“And when the jewel becomes dirty and broken, Dr Bell, when the racehorse can no longer run, this man disposes of them and his love is all gone and forgotten.”

There was real feeling in his voice, quiet and horrible.

“Since he had discovered the truth about my mother, my little sister was nothing to him. She was undeserving even of the basic respect he would customarily afford to a human being. I believe her death had genuinely shaken him - he was quite incapable of imagining that she might have real feelings, a personality of her own, something that made her alive.”

“You think, of course, that he loved me better! He did not. I was always the little Darryl to him, his brilliant son who was loved and would always love him back, because how could it be otherwise? Up until the day of his death the old fool had no idea what I had felt when I found her. Oh, how I hated him! I am not sorry for what I did, not for a second; I would happily do it again.

“I know he didn’t look like a heartless man. I know that with others, he wasn’t one; and perhaps you do not believe me, perhaps you think my motive was his money. Well, think what you will; only I will not accept a penny of what he bequeathed to me.”

His cheeks were wet with tears, and still he looked straight at me, his expression full of angry mirth.

“Judge me for what I’ve done if you wish. Send me to the gallows; I care not. But you must, you _must_ allow me to take all the blame upon myself. Surely you cannot arrest Irene! Her one fault is that she offered me her friendship, she listened to me, and felt my pain. Is what she has done so unlike the actions of your friend Dr Doyle?”

At last, Miss Stokes seemed as troubled as he was, and she turned to him impulsively, covering his hand with both of hers.

“Oh, no, Darryl, you cannot!” she cried quietly. “I utterly forbid this!”

Doyle interrupted them before this scene could develop any further.

“I assure you, we have no intentions of inflicting any harm upon either of you,” he said, in a low voice. There was silence, and then he looked questioningly at me.

“Yes,” said I. “I agree with Dr Doyle. There is no need for anyone else to learn this sad story. If only you promise to leave England, I am sure we can resolve this affair to mutual satisfaction.”

“Dr Doyle!” Miss Stokes looked stricken. “I always knew you had a kind heart, but this I can scarcely repay. No expressions of gratitude seem adequate. I can only assure you that I regret nothing so much as the wretched role you had to play in this story; how I wish I had never lied to you.”

“I can hardly blame you, Miss Stokes,” he said. He was white as chalk. “I am not prepared to swear I would’ve believed the truth as willingly as I believed the lie. One might say I have deceived myself. But I am punished for that bitterly enough.”

“For that, too, I am sorry.” She smiled a sad gentle smile. “You of all people deserved better.

“And I thank you, Dr Bell,” she added, turning to me. “I apologize for any pain I have caused you. I was mistaken; when I realized that Dr Doyle was released despite the fact that he did not and could not have any alibi, I understood that you and I have more in common than you might think. I should’ve seen it sooner, but - you will forgive me - you’re a good actor.”

Lansdowne, too, had stood up and bowed to us silently. Miss Stokes jumped to her feet and offered him her arm.

“We shan’t take any more of your time,” said she. “By tomorrow morning I will leave the country, and Darryl will follow soon afterwards. I have written a letter to Inspector Miller explaining everything; as I promised, this case will be closed.”

And with that they walked out and vanished into the snow and from our lives, two small figures with their arms linked tightly.

After a while Doyle and I followed them. But we had nowhere to go in that strange city; and we walked through its streets, silent and lost, with no particular destination in mind. All around us was whiteness. I heard neither his steps nor my own; as if in a fog, I saw vague silhouettes of occasional cabs and passers-by.

If I had thought that solving the case would change something between us, I was wrong. I had no more to say to him than I’d had that morning; no, it was worse now, because I knew, I could see, how hard it had all been for him. I’d rarely seen him so viscerally exhausted, so deeply disillusioned.

And I wished nothing so much as to make that horrible burden lighter. But for once, it was not in my power - no, it was folly even to think that we could still be friends.

I felt ill, too. I felt like a man who has been made to look at brilliant light for far too long, until his eyes hurt so badly he wished he were blind.


	5. The Darkness

“There’s one thing I don’t understand, Bell,” I said. “Why on earth had you not called the police? It is as if you knew everything even before meeting them. What if it turned out that Darryl had killed for money?”

He gave that some thought.

“No,” said he. “I did not know everything. And, while I never thought it likely that money was the motive - you yourself said that the murder looked like a case of personal revenge - I allow it was possible.”

“Why, then?”

“I felt that was something you would’ve done,” he answered, softly and evenly, the snow under his cane crunching with the same uninterrupted regularity.

I don’t know what answer I had expected; certainly not that.

“You would’ve given the murderer a chance, that is,” he clarified at length, “rather than automatically assuming that he deserves to hang. I thought of that and decided to refrain from informing Miller of the developments.”

We were walking towards the river. The dying orange light shone upon us from above; there was nothing but us, and that light, and endless silence, interrupted only by the gentle splashing of water ahead.

Elmer Lansdowne… ah, what was the use in thinking about Elmer Lansdowne! He was my darkest thoughts, my wildest suspicions - a friend turned a traitor, heartlessness under the guise of love. What he had done was a devilish mockery of my foolish desire to do right; a cruel proof of the Doctor’s counsel to mistrust everyone.

I saw Lansdowne’s ravings in an entirely new light. Why did it not occur to me that there was something awful in his referring to his daughter - whether she was alive or dead - as “it”? “My little sister was nothing to him,” Darryl had said. “She was undeserving even of the basic respect he would customarily afford to a human being.” Perhaps I could’ve seen it, too, if only I hadn’t so wanted to remain blind.

No, Bell’s advice wasn’t madness. It was only a painful truth; but I understood now that, no matter how reasonable it was, I would never be able to follow it in its entirety, with all its awful implications. And I knew that he felt the same.

“I would like to request something of you, Doyle,” he told me. I stopped and turned to him.

He made a couple of steps away, into the gathering snowy gloom; large snowflakes floated around him, dazzling white sparks against blackness.

“Don’t give your life to this as I have given.” And he looked away. Somehow we both knew very well what he was talking about. “I had nothing to live for and looked for a purpose; and I received it - a mission I could devote my entire being to. You’ve excelled at this game, Doyle, but perhaps you will never be able to beat me at it; perhaps no one will. That does not signify. It isn’t a craft you’d wish to master in its entirety.

“You’re left alone at the end,” he continued quietly, “good for nothing else but the one thing you have perfected yourself for.”

“Nonsense,” I said, for his rhetoric began to alarm me a great deal. “Whatever are you implying?”

“You must go beyond that,” he said, his eyes anxious and searching. “I have asked you once not to abandon medicine; forget that - I was a fool. Do anything that makes you happier. Maybe you do not trust my opinion now, and you have every right not to. But I feel that this is something you know yourself - you have always known it, even when I did not.”

“Doctor-“

“And I wish to give you something,” interrupted he hastily. “A token of sincerity, if you will.”

For a while he fumbled in his pockets, and then he reached out and dropped something small onto my open palm.

I stared at the object in great astonishment. It was a plain brass ring with a semi-precious gemstone, yellow and foggy like good honey; the sunlight ignited it into a small flame.

The Doctor was not a man for conventional gifts, but everything he gave to others was of the utterly practical sort. This was, therefore, the single oddest gift I had ever received from him.

I studied it silently. It was engirdled with engravings, and after a while I recognized that these were a string of bluebells.

“I didn’t know you liked visual puns,” I forced out, swallowing.

He gently closed my hand around the ring and stepped away.

 _Gratitude_.

“Where do you think you’re going?” I enquired. My voice was raw.

“I don’t know,” he admitted honestly.

“Listen, Bell,” said I. “If I’ve learnt anything from this case, it’s that trust is not the highest form of loyalty and compassion.”

He stared at the ground, the snow falling unstoppably upon his shoulders and the brims of his hat. There was something of a bronze statue in him; and at the same time he looked too fragile, too ill, too heartwrenchingly human.

“I’ve learnt that, too,” he said, almost inaudibly.

And then I did what I had long wanted to do: I threw my arms around him and pulled him into a fierce embrace. At first he clearly had no idea how to react; he stood still, and I could’ve laughed at how awkward that stillness was if only I had it in my heart to laugh. Instead, I buried my face in his chest.

All of a sudden he held me desperately, squeezing my shoulders with his hands.

“My child,” I heard him murmur in a hitching voice, “my poor, poor child.”

I’m not sure he had any idea how grateful I was for that little endearment.

“I love you,” I said. He seemed closer to tears than I had ever seen him; and I stroked his shoulder-blades, feeling him tremble less and less until he had once again relaxed into immobility.

I remember breaking that hug out of some vague sense of politeness, all the more absurd because I had to pat Bell’s arm gently to get him to release me. I had the impression that if I let him, he might’ve remained like this until he became physically uncomfortable.

“There,” I said, soothingly, and took his hand. “I’m not leaving you.”

That seemed to be comfort enough. He followed me silently; I think I could’ve drowned us both in that river if I wished and he still wouldn’t object. We walked along the quay, the icy path under our feet burning a dazzling orange, and then the sun had vanished into the black waters of the Channel and soft velvety darkness swallowed us whole.

A week after that Miller had forwarded me, without any further comment, a letter that ran as follows:

_Dear Inspector Miller,_

_I wish to go on record stating that it was I who has become the cause of a curious misunderstanding known to you as the case of the murder of Colonel Elmer Lansdowne._

_There was never any murder… But I have made it look so in hopes of framing Dr Arthur Doyle; I was loyal to my employer, as anyone will tell you, and when I found him dead, I naturally assumed it was Dr Doyle’s fault for not caring after him properly._

_To prove my claim, I will recount a list of clues I had personally planted at the scene of the crime. If not in your possession, some of them will surely be found in Dr Bell’s._

_\- the window was forced with a crowbar lying in the garden-shed;_

_\- the note purportedly written by Dr Doyle as a threat against Colonel Lansdowne - I had torn it out of Dr Doyle’s manuscript of his story called “The Adventure of The Devil’s Foot” - was locked in the drawer of the colonel’s desk; the key to that drawer I had thrown into the grass of the front lawn;_

_\- there are two nails, one on each side of the colonel’s bed, on which I had placed some threads from Dr Doyle’s cashmere scarf;_

_\- and, of course, there’s a mark from a syringe on the back of Colonel Lansdowne’s neck; I had stabbed him with an empty syringe posthumously._

_Only when the enquiry began and the cause of death was announced to be an overdose of laudanum did I realize that the colonel had committed suicide._

_It is to Dr Bell’s and Dr Doyle’s credit that they had suspected me from the very beginning and, in the end, had followed me to Brighton. No doubt they would not have let me escape if they had proof of my guilt, but I have left none, which is why even you, Inspector, had naturally assumed that Dr Doyle was the murderer. Let the memory of this prevent you from passing any hasty judgements upon others who have made similarly wrong assumptions._

_Yours truly,_

_Irene Stokes._

Enquiries were made, and it turned out that on Thursday the 25th Miss Stokes boarded _The Orient Star_ , bound for Port Blair, India. Scotland Yard sent a wire to the Port Blair police requesting that she be found and arrested; but it was as though there had never been anyone by that name.

Rachel Lansdowne arrived in England on that same day with a man whom she introduced to Inspector Miller as her son Darryl. If Darryl looked slightly different when, a couple of days later, they both had left the country and gone back to India to recover from the shock brought to them by the death of Colonel Lansdowne, nobody noticed it; after all, on both occasions the captain of their ship saw the documents that positively identified him as Darryl Lansdowne, the son of Elmer and Rachel Lansdowne.

All of the colonel’s money and other possessions were given to an orphanage in Clerkenwell, whose staff were overjoyed - after they were done being utterly flabbergasted.

If anyone in Scotland Yard ever spoke of Irene Stokes again, it was with a sort of quiet hostile respect. “The little devil,” whistled, I remember, Constable Lennox. “She almost succeeded in landing our Dr Doyle behind the bars!”

Her remark about the lack of evidence and Inspector Miller’s conduct of the case had hit the nail on the head. Not only had Bell’s reputation not suffered, but a week later he was respectfully invited to help the police with another enquiry; to which he replied that he was temporarily not taking any cases due to being preoccupied at his alma mater, the Edinburgh University.

I recall sitting at his bedside on the evening when we returned to London - he was no longer reading any mysterious treatises, but soundly and peacefully asleep - and taking out the ring he had given me. Even in that gloom, the stone seemed to glow warmly. It was like a smooth round drop of light - that sweet, sweet merciful light that illuminates nothing.


End file.
